How Zuma’s corruption nearly sank South Africa

Employees and contractors demonstrate outside the Optimum coal mine which Glencore was forced to sellMARCO LONGARI

The dusty coal town of Pullens Hope, two hours east of Johannesburg, was still without water last week. About 2,000 miners there are on strike, having not been paid for weeks, and the water purification plant funded by the mine has stopped production. The people of Pullens Hope are among the victims of post-apartheid South Africa’s biggest corruption scandal, which forced the resignation of Jacob Zuma last month.

The town’s Optimum coal mine was sold by London-listed mining giant Glencore in 2016, in a deal that investigators believe was central to the scandal in which the president and his patrons, the controversial Gupta brothers, became embroiled.

An official report by the country’s former public protector (an independent ombudsman) has concluded that Glencore was coerced into…

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